How did the 1% get it all?

Answer: percent by percent year after year.  Big amounts of money cannot be earned.  They are the result of contracts otherwise called investments.  Once a person has made a contract that results in the addition of more money year after year, that person can receive far more money than they could possibly ever earn.  To change $100 into $106 takes work; to change $100 million into $106 million is inevitable.

Once these contracts are in place, money keeps accumulating.  A person need not be greedy for this to happen.  It is important that we recognize the automatic nature of this accumulation because that is how we can get to a solution.  There must be limits put on how much money any one person can accumulate.  Life is limited.  Few people live 100 years or more.  That is nature’s way of making room for new people.  We need to limit income to make room for other people to have decent incomes. 

You have heard of the “death tax.”  That makes it sound as if people who die should no longer be taxed.  That is very misleading as it is intended to be.  The phrase in effect gives heirs the money.  Heirs didn’t earn it.  Perhaps it would be fine if letting some people accumulate money did not hurt anyone else.  But it does.  We have millions of people in poverty because we have billionaires.   No one earns one billion, $1,000,000,000.  No one needs one billion.  That single billion would give 1,000 people $1 million – more than most people will earn in a lifetime.

Bottom line: money is not corn.  What one person gets another person does not get.  We need to focus on fair wages, fair prices, and reasonable limits to income.  That’s why I promote the Hour as the world money unit.  Time marks our path in its beginning, throughout its length, and at its end.  Nature is setting the example for us to follow.